The wind that screamed between the high peaks which kept a grim vigil
over both sides of St. Bernard Pass proclaimed itself monarch.
Man was the trespasser here, the wind said, and let who trespassed look
to himself. The only kindness he could expect was a quick and painless
death. This was the haunt of the elements.
Overawed and more than a little afraid, Franz tried to speak to Father
Benjamin, who was leading the way. The wind snatched the words from his
teeth, whirled them off on its own wings and hurled mocking echoes back
into the boy's ears. Franz dropped a hand to the massive head of
Caesar, who was pacing beside him, and found some comfort there.
Franz thought back over the way they had come.
The inn at Cantine, where he had passed the night with Father Benjamin,
was not a half hour's travel time behind them, yet it was an entire
world away. The inn was still civilization. This was a lost territory.
The Alpine meadows had given way to rocks and boulders, among which grew
only moss and lichens. The wind was right and no man belonged here.
Franz shuddered. They had skirted chasms where a fall meant death. They
had passed beneath rising cliffs whereupon lay boulders so delicately
balanced that it was almost as though an incautious breath would set
them to rolling, and an avalanche with them. In the shadier places there
had been deep snow, and at no point was the permanent snow line more
than a few hundred yards above them.
With a mighty effort, Franz banished his fears and regained his
self-control. This was the Grand St. Bernard Pass, one of the easiest of
all ways to cross the Alps. The altitude was only about eight thousand
feet. When Franz stood on the summit of Little Sister he had been almost
a mile higher. The old, the crippled and children used this Pass
regularly.
Franz told himself that he had been overwhelmed by the reputation of the
Pass, rather than by any real danger. It went without saying that so
many perished here simply because so many came here. The boy fastened
his thoughts on practical matters.
Supplies for the Hospice, Father Benjamin had told him, were brought to
Cantine on mules and carried from there by monks and _maronniers_. It
was not that mules were unable to reach the Hospice--sometimes they
did--but, at best, it was a highly uncertain undertaking. From about the
middle of June until the autumn storms began, the Pass was considered
safe enough so that rescue work might be halted during that period, but
an unexpected blizzard might come any time. Thus, though in due course
the muleteer probably would be able to get his animals back down, as
long as they were marooned at the Hospice they'd be consuming valuable
and hard-to-gather hay.
Father Benjamin turned and spoke, and Franz heard clearly. "We have a
fine day for our journey."
Franz tried to answer, could not, and Father Benjamin smiled and waved
him ahead. The boy grinned sheepishly. He should have remembered that it
is almost impossible to speak against such a wind but relatively easy to
speak, and be heard, with it. He edged past Father Benjamin and said,
"Indeed we have."
He was suddenly calm and no longer afraid. This was no foreign land and
it was not a place of devils. It was his homeland. It was St. Bernard
Pass, where, of his own free will, he had wanted to become a
_maronnier_. He belonged here.
Father Benjamin put his mouth very close to Franz's ear and shouted, "Do
you still think you have chosen well?"